The Gulf War

The euphoria caused by the drawing down of the Cold War was
dramatically overshadowed by the August 2, 1990, invasion
of the small nation of Kuwait by Iraq. Iraq, under Saddam
Hussein, and Iran, under its Islamic fundamentalist regime,
had emerged as the two major military powers in the
oil-rich Persian Gulf area. The two countries had fought a
long, inconclusive war in the 1980s. Less hostile to the
United States than Iran, Iraq had won some support from the
Reagan and Bush administrations. The occupation of Kuwait,
posing a threat to Saudi Arabia, changed the diplomatic
calculation overnight.

President Bush strongly condemned the Iraqi action, called
for Iraq's unconditional withdrawal, and sent a major
deployment of U.S. troops to the Middle East. He assembled
one of the most extraordinary military and political
coalitions of modern times, with military forces from Asia,
Europe, and Africa, as well as the Middle East.

In the days and weeks following the invasion, the U.N.
Security Council passed 12 resolutions condemning the Iraqi
invasion and imposing wide-ranging economic sanctions on
Iraq. On November 29, it approved the use of force if Iraq
did not withdraw from Kuwait by January 15, 1991.
Gorbachev's Soviet Union, once Iraq's major arms supplier,
made no effort to protect its former client.

Bush also confronted a major constitutional issue. The U.S.
Constitution gives the legislative branch the power to
declare war. Yet in the second half of the 20th century,
the United States had become involved in Korea and Vietnam
without an official declaration of war and with only murky
legislative authorization. On January 12, 1991, three days
before the U.N. deadline, Congress granted President Bush
the authority he sought in the most explicit and sweeping
war-making power given a president in nearly half a
century.

Oil fires burn behind a destroyed Iraqi tank at the conclusion of the Gulf War in February 1991. The United States led a coalition of more than 30 nations in an air and ground campaign called Desert Storm that ended Iraq's occupation of Kuwait. (John Wicart)

The United States, in coalition with Great Britain, France,
Italy, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other countries, succeeded
in liberating Kuwait with a devastating, U.S.-led air
campaign that lasted slightly more than a month. It was
followed by a massive invasion of Kuwait and Iraq by
armored and airborne infantry forces. With their superior
speed, mobility, and firepower, the allied forces
overwhelmed the Iraqi forces in a land campaign lasting
only 100 hours.

The victory, however, was incomplete and unsatisfying. The
U.N. resolution, which Bush enforced to the letter, called
only for the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait. Saddam Hussein
remained in power, savagely repressing the Kurds in the
north and the Shiites in the south, both of whom the United
States had encouraged to rebel. Hundreds of oil-well fires,
deliberately set in Kuwait by the Iraqis, took until
November 1991 to extinguish. Saddam's regime also
apparently thwarted U.N. inspectors who, operating in
accordance with Security Council resolutions, worked to
locate and destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction,
including nuclear facilities more advanced than had
previously been suspected and huge stocks of chemical
weapons.

The Gulf War enabled the United States to persuade the Arab
states, Israel, and a Palestinian delegation to begin
direct negotiations aimed at resolving the complex and
interlocked issues that could eventually lead to a lasting
peace in the region. The talks began in Madrid, Spain, on
October 30, 1991. In turn, they set the stage for the
secret negotiations in Norway that led to what at the time
seemed a historic agreement between Israel and the
Palestine Liberation Organization, signed at the White
House on September 13, 1993.